A Bad Debt Won't Wait
by notanotherfanficauthor
Summary: A young Vincent becomes embroiled in the dangerous and violent politics of The Order, and finds an unlikely ally in Claudia Wolf. But how long before mounting debts and conflicting interests degenerate into mutual resentment? Ch 10 up.
1. Chapter 1

_AN: The first chapter of my brand new Silent Hill fanfiction, after an extended hiatus from . It's set in 1993, just before Walter begins his ten hearts murders. Walter, Vincent and Claudia are all students at Pleasant River university. And yes, I'm aware that this sounds like the premise for a bad sitcom. I'm running with the timeline that used to be up on Nursery Cryme (I think), so it's also set immediately pre SH2. I'm probably going to take poetic license with some of the smaller chronological details and mythologies, so no complaining. It'll be a good read, regardless, I promise. This is the first serious story I've written solo in a very long time that's not a one-shot, and updates might, at times, be few and far between, but I'll keep working at it.  
_

* * *

The foppish young man leaned back in his monstrously uncomfortable plastic chair, removed his glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose sharply with a deep sigh. Staring out of the window with blurry vision, he rubbed his temples, took another swig of cold coffee and thought longingly of the springy mattress waiting for him in his dorm room at the university halls of residence. It was almost midnight, and the library was near deserted. He cursed whichever member of the college faculty had come up with the brilliant idea of making the study facilities open all night during exam period. It meant he had no conceivable excuse whatsoever for avoiding his coursework. The dank little building, with its polyester charmlessness and the low hum and bright glare of the computer monitors called to his academic conscience and prevented him from hitting the local bars, or hitting the hay. He was, of course, taking far too many subjects. He had really overshot his bolt this semester. How utterly typical of him, an overgrown schoolboy with far too much to prove. He was in his third year here, and hadn't matured in the slightest. It was, perhaps, a sheer effort of will on his part to resolutely avoid becoming a serious scholar, no matter how adept he might have been in the role. He replaced his spectacles and glared murderously at the numbers and figures laughing at him from his notes. It wasn't that the module in accountancy he was taking was difficult, just that it was all so _tedious_. Still, it needed to be done. It was a skill which, he felt certain, would be equally as useful as learning about the local history and superstitions, or his private theology lessons. He felt enormously grateful for his education; there had only been two Wish House scholarship places available, and he'd taken one with ease. The other one had gone to that utter cretin, and all round Oedipal weirdo, Sullivan, but he didn't feel too insulted by this association, because he was well aware that his dirty mac wearing comrade from the orphanage had made his way into Mother Dahlia's affections with his freakish devotion to The Order and anything they chose to spoon feed him. Vincent, on the other hand, was quite assured that he had been chosen for his intellect, not his piety.

Speaking of piety, the third little addition to their august company had been quite the surprise, three years ago when they left Silent Hill for Pleasant River University. The river in question, incidentally, was somewhat less than pleasant, and had a disproportionate number of used condoms floating in it, but this was entirely besides the point. It had been something of a surprise when they reached the bus stop that morning and found their travelling companion to be none other than Leonard Wolf's daughter. Unlike them, she wasn't an orphan, but she'd probably have been better off as one. Wolf, the inexplicably influential, chauvinist, alcoholic pig, had apparently decided to stop using his equally batshit crazy daughter as a punching bag for a few years, and let her get a degree instead. He could only surmise that she was being sent to college for the same reason he and Walter were; they were all earmarked to become future priests and priestesses of The Order. So their education was coming at a very high price indeed; a lifetime of service to a demon worshipping cult. Vincent may have been raised in their orphanage, he may have had their dogma drilled into him for as long as he could remember, but he was not, nor had he ever been, an idiot. All their talk of paradise, of God, of faith, it was all bullshit. They were a cult, and just because their demons and Paradise and rituals happened to be a little more tangible, a little more _real_ than say...downing KoolAid to get on God's spaceship, it didn't mean they were any less mental, albeit in varying degrees. As far as Vincent was concerned, if he'd discovered weird shit going on at the site of an Indian burial ground, he'd have skipped town and left it the fuck alone, not founded a religion. Still, that was Saint Jennifer for you.

Claudia and Walter really were a hilariously socially inept pair. Vincent had made friends so very quickly and easily, charming his way around his dodgy lineage so people forgot he was a scholarship kid fresh out an orphanage. Within a few weeks his popularity was assured, and within a few months he'd already bedded enough freshers to get himself a rather satisfactory reputation. He remembered with a slight frown, Claudia marching into his dorm room and pleading with him in an impassioned voice, her long pale fingers plucking nervously at her frayed hems, "But it isn't _true_, is it?!" He'd laughed in her face. It wasn't that he particularly wanted to hurt anyone, it was just that this was his _chance_, his one shot at having a taste of the pleasures of the real world before he was reeled back in and given the wholly unwanted title of "Father". Before his destiny came back to bite him on the arse. This was the only taste of freedom he was likely to get, and he wasn't about to let Claudia pop up and remind him of where he came from, of where he was going back to.

He thought she'd understand a little better. After all, she was getting away from her father. He thought maybe she'd take the opportunity to loosen up a little, enjoy life while she could. But it seemed, perhaps, that Leonard's hold over her was not quite so easily broken. Or that crazy bitch Dahlia Gillespie's for that matter, God rest her soul.

So Claudia spent her time studying, praying on her knees and pestering him with endless theological matters as though the fact that they came from the same place meant that she had some kind of right to be seen talking to him in public. Not cool. When she wasn't doing all this, she was hanging about with Walter, who followed her about like a shaggy homeless puppy. Walter had a habit of latching onto anything that had a vaguely maternal air to it, and Claudia seemed to have taken it upon herself to look after him. They were close, very close, and this irritated him a little. After all, Vincent had been the silly little kid who followed Claudia and Alessa around, hoping to be invited to join in their games. And he'd been the silly little kid who'd wrapped his arms around Claudia's waist and buried his face in her chest and sobbed with her when Alessa "died". He'd been the one hiding in the basement of the hospital with her, the two of them huddled side by side in a cupboard as they listened to Dahlia being murdered and Alessa being kidknapped. Walter had been too preoccupied with tracking his mother down. It had often occurred to Vincent that someone should correct Walter Sullivan on certain matters concerning his parentage, but if he was slightly more placid believing that his mother was a holy apartment room (no, he was not joking) than the slightly less mystical probability that she was a whore who had abandoned him, just like Vincent's own mother, then that was fine, he supposed.

But after Dahlia was killed, Claudia had changed. She was no longer a frightened kid who missed her best friend, she blossomed overnight into a batshit crazy evangelist. Dahlia was lauded as a demi-saint in the church, and Claudia had turned to God in a big way, as if she felt it her responsibility to carry on the Gillespie legacy. Vincent frowned. It was around this time they had started to fight, seriously fight. Vincent had found out that Dahlia had burned Alessa on purpose, and thrown it in Claudia's face during an argument. She had never quite forgiven him. It seemed to him that she simply rationalised anything that was barbaric, anything that shattered her vision of Dahlia as a Saint and Alessa as a willing vessel, anything that hurt too much to think about, as "the will of God". She remained painfully naïve and fragile while Vincent grew up and developed a healthy sense of cynicism. Was it any wonder then, that she turned to Walter for friendship and camaraderie? Walter, who was equally desperate to swallow down anything he was fed under the promise of salvation, acceptance, love and belonging and all the other things that Vincent had since decided were not worth pursuing. Happiness, as far as he was concerned, was something you snatched here and there, in the arms of a half naked girl, or in the euphoria of a drunken night with the lads, in a nice meal or a warm bed or something equally _tangible_. Abstract ideals and asceticism went no way towards making him feel fulfilled. Some people were just wired like that. Some people were a little too sane to find their happiness in delusions and prayer.

It wasn't that he didn't believe in God. It was hard not to believe in God after you've seen your childhood hopscotch companion give birth to it. You couldn't dismiss the facts, after all. But there were different ways you could look at the situation, and he figured he had the more well balanced of views. And right now, he had the chance to live a normal student life, before going back to a world of dark stone and incense and blood sacrifices, and he was damned if he wasn't going to grasp that with two hands.

No, he didn't feel guilty about Claudia. People grew apart, it was just a fact of life. She would be just fine in her own little world of faith and dogma and abstinence. Each to their own.

Besides which, even if she was possibly the least popular girl on campus, no one would give her any real trouble while Walter was at her heels, her loyal protector with his creepy menacing stare and tall, broad frame. Which was good, it saved his conscience from pricking him too much when he walked past and ignored the all too frequent scenes of students jeering at her, of college football players snorting and throwing balls of paper at her flaxen head, of the barrage of insults, sexual slurs, sneers and jokes which always seemed to come flying her way. Claudia Wolf was a magnet for trouble, an ugly, bizarre looking girl with an infuriating air of marytrdom. Hell, he was doing her a favour by not sticking up for her. She probably believed that turning the other cheek, to borrow an idiom from Christianity, would get her to Paradise that little bit quicker.

"I've been looking for you..." Speak of the devil. It was Claudia, pale and sun-starved, dressed like she was wearing hand-me-downs from the Victorian era as usual. "Walter said you were planning on staying here all night."

He frowned, never having quite gotten used to the older girl's uncanny ability to locate his whereabouts, even after three years of campus life. It still annoyed him. "Yeah," he replied defensively, "Well, maybe you should be doing the same. Exams are next week."

"I didn't waste the semester on parties and socialising," she pointed out levelly. "I don't need to cram."

"Did you want something, Claudia, or did you just come to gloat at me?"

She looked vaguely hurt as she held up a flask, rather lamely. "I made soup today. I thought you might want some."

He glared at her petulantly. "You're not my mother, Claudia. And you've been hanging around Walter too long if you think you need to act like it." It was a nice enough gesture, but with Claudia, there was always some insufferable self righteous motive behind everything she did. If he took the soup, it would be a minor victory on her part, because she'd have made him look weak. And he resented her determination to tie him to Silent Hill, her assumption that just because she and Walter were painfully lost at Pleasant River that he must be equally incapable of living a normal life. She was a horrible reminder of the incestuous, suffocating cult he was going back to once his degree was completed.

"I just thought..."

"Look, no offence, but I'm fine. And besides," he added cruelly before he could stop himself, "I wouldn't eat your soup if you paid me. It tastes like shit."

His stomach rumbled, and she smirked, setting it down in front of him with her usual disregard for his wishes. "You might feel differently in a couple of hours," she said simply. And then, in her typical artless way, she let slip, in that badly feigned casual way of hers, the reason she had really come. "Of course, you could always join Walter and I for evening prayer..."

"Or I could stay here and do something productive," he shot back, irritated. "Claudia, it's going to take more than a flask full of holy soup to save my soul."

"I worry about you Vincent."

"I worry about myself as well," he responded in all seriousness. "I especially worry about how I'm going to stay sane when I have to move back to Silent Hill and am stuck with you and Oedipus Sullivan for company." He feigned a thoughtful look. "Maybe I'll cultivate a drink problem, like your father. What would you think about that, Claudia?"

Her face crumpled a little. _Back of the net. _He was feeling especially nasty this evening, and the blonde haired girl standing in front of him wearing her heart on her sleeve was always much too easy a target. Not only did she embody everything that was preventing him from having a normal future, but she always reacted so _sportingly_.

"I think if you keep on like this, you'll go to Hell." She sniffed haughtily.

He chuckled. "And what about your Dad? Is he going to Hell?"

There was a moment's silence and Vincent got that familiar twinge he always got when arguing with Claudia. It was the little lurch of guilt that told him he'd baited her too far. It was sometimes a little difficult to make the distinction that while, for him, their discourses were a bit of sport, a way of amusing himself and feeling a little more vindicated, for her they were deadly serious. With Claudia, everything was deadly serious. The girl wouldn't know what a happy medium was if it hit her in the face. "You know where we are if you change your mind," she said quietly, before sweeping off, silently. He glanced at her retreating form. Typical, she wasn't even wearing shoes.


	2. Chapter 2

_AN: Chapter two. Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed. J._

* * *

The room was filled with uniform desks, each bearing a number. The clock was ticking obnoxiously, the only sound in the room save for the low scratching of fifty pens all simultaneously scribbling, and the odd frustrated sigh. Forty eight people were stressed out of their mind, one was clearly still stoned from the night before, and one was simply just too cocky to possibly feel the pressure.

Local history. If ever the was a wholly pointless subject, Vincent felt sure that this was it. He put his pen down momentarily and looked around the room. There were at least two girls he could recognise that he had carnal knowledge of, and this thought amused him greatly. He noticed Walter, a frown of deep concentration on his face, his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth as he struggled, with furrowed brows, to remember even the basic facts. Sullivan really was no academic, he reflected. Claudia was writing calmly, a look of almost smug serenity on her face. She'd do well, she always did. She'd probably manage a perfect score, since everything she did was with the zealous attitude that it was for the glory of God. But Vincent would still manage his A, and he'd have done it in the knowledge that he hadn't wasted the semester holed up in his room, feverishly memorising dull facts. One or two nights of cramming, and he could sail through any exam.

He'd discovered this, fortuitously, quite early on, and it remained a point of envy with most of his peers. Vincent caught the eye of the invigilating professor, who was glaring at him. He shot her a wink and a smirk, and returned his attention to his paper, looking over his answers and crossing out a few words here and there, replacing them with something more verbose, just for the Hell of it.

"That's time. Put down your pens and stop writing."

Vincent laid down his pen immediately, and stood up with a lazy stretch. Sullivan was still scribbling furiously, obvious to the sharp frown of the invigilator.

"Mr Sullivan."

He continued to write.

"Mr Sullivan!"

Walter dropped his pen and looked up with a start, a rather sheepish look on his face. Vincent suppressed a snigger, and shot a knowing glance at Claudia, who pursed her lips. He shrugged to himself; Walter would probably still scrape a pass. He always did, with Claudia tutoring him. For a moment, he almost felt sorry for his fellow priest-to-be, but pity was a rather useless emotion, to all intents and purposes. Still he was feeling in a rather generous mood that day, with the last of the exams over and three weeks of spring holidays stretching out before him, sparking with the infinite promise of lazy days and late nights. He would be staying in his modest little room in the halls of residence, of course, and make up some excuse, as he always did, as to why he couldn't go back to Silent Hill for his break.

As they filed out of the exam hall, he struck up idle conversation with one of his classmates, comparing answers and expressing general relief at another round of exams being done and dusted. He was about to crack a joke about their frigid professor's sexuality, when Walter grabbed his arm.

"Vincent."

He stopped and arched an eyebrow expectantly. Walter was a man of few words at the best of times. If he was about to try and make small talk, this was going to be torture.

"Vincent, I can't go back to Silent Hill." He shuffled his feet.

"You and me both, Sullivan." Vincent shrugged and made to walk on, but Walter continued to hold his arm. There was a wild look in his eyes, a look which Vincent had seen few times but which gave him, despite his soft features, the look of a madman.

"No, I mean it. I have to stay in Pleasant River."

Vincent rolled his eyes. "How does this in any way concern me, Walter?"

"It...it concerns all of us. Vincent, you have to help me. Please."

"Look, Sullivan," Vincent rounded on him in sudden bitterness, his green eyes flashing, "I don't want to go back there either, but that's life. Don't come crying to me just because Claudia's too wrapped up in her own fucking holy mission to realise how messed up that town is." He shook his arm free and strode away angrily.

"But...Vincent..."

"Save it for someone who cares, Sullivan," he shot over his shoulder.

Vincent felt the tip of his ears burning in a flush of bitterness and remorse. Perhaps it wasn't the best course of action, given that Walter would no doubt be his future colleague, but really, the less he had to do with Silent Hill at the moment, the better. And he couldn't exactly feel sorry for someone who had only won his scholarship in the first place through blind and stupid devotion. If Walter was too much of an idiot to weasel out of going home for the holidays, that really wasn't his problem.

* * *

It was mid afternoon, one week exactly into their vacation, and Vincent was lying on his bed, shoes off and shirt open, listening to the rain falling outside and staring at the ceiling with a vaguely contented smile on his face as the opening bars of "_This Charming Man_" jangled quietly on his tape player and he idly contemplated smoking a spliff. He eventually rejected the idea, partly because he wasn't nearly bored or malcontented enough to have reached the recreational drugs stage, and partly because he just wasn't in the right mood. He lit a cigarette instead..

There was a knock at the door, and Vincent closed his eyes with a groan, taking a long draw and exhaling deeply, before flicking some ash into the beer can beside his bed.

"Door's open," he drawled languidly.

He wasn't quite sure who he was expecting to walk, or rather stumble, in, but it was certainly not the hunched, barefoot and dripping wet form of Claudia Wolf, her stringy blonde hair clinging wildly to her face.

"Oh, for f..." he began, but trailed off when he saw she had an ugly purple bruise blossoming on her left cheekbone. Of course, it was nothing unusual. If she was going to insist on going home, then Leonard was going to insist on beating her, and that was that. But she looked so pitiable and urgent that he stopped short in his tracks and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, making room for her to sit down. She remained standing, and began to pace the room, wringing her hands.

He watched her for a few minutes, finished his cigarette, and forced a languid tone to his voice. "So...dare I ask?"

She glanced at him but didn't answer, as he realised that there were tears mingling with the rain on her water-streaked cheeks.

He shrugged and continued. "So what's Leonard d..."

"I hate him!" she shouted abruptly at the top of her voice, teeth bared, before clapping one hand to her mouth and shaking her head. "No...no..." she mumbled, "No...I don't mean that..." Claudia looked up desperately, "But it's not my father. That's not why I'm here. Vincent, you have to help."

He was about to remind her that he didn't _have_ to do anything, but it didn't seem right somehow to bait her when she was like this. It wasn't like Claudia to run away from home just because she'd been beaten up. The girl was the poster child for devoted daughter. Something else had to be going on. "Right, take your coat off and sit down," he sighed.

She fumbled clumsily with the buttons on her jacket, and threw the soaking wet article of clothing over the desk, splashing rainwater onto his coursework notes. Her short sleeved blouse revealed further bruises, in varying degrees of ripeness, and he looked away with a vague feeling of discomfort. She sat down beside him and continued to intertwine her fingers anxiously. "Something terrible is happening," she blurted out.

"In Silent Hill? Well stop the press."

"Do you know Jimmy Stone?"

Silly girl, what did she take him for? Of course he knew Jimmy Stone. One of Leonard Wolf's favourite drinking buddies and all round prick, Stone had caused something of a ruckus when he started his own sect within the Order, the Valtiel sect. Vincent personally didn't see why some useless handle cranking little monster needed its own sect, but the idea was that he was going to act as a mediator between the two _real_ sects, the Holy Mother and the Saint Ladies, or Holy Woman sect, depending on what they were calling themselves this week. The sects in themselves were fairly pointless, both were as screwed up as each other. The Holy Mother Sect, the ones who ran Wish House, believed in God being born through a conjurer, or some shit, and the Saint Ladies believed in God being placed in the womb of someone with otherworldly powers. It was thanks to the Saint Ladies, and Dahlia in particular, that the whole mess with Alessa had occurred. Jimmy Stone had been a priest in the Holy Mother sect, before deciding, in a fit of unwarranted self importance, that he was forming his own club, after having a massive falling out with Tony Archibald, another Holy Mother priest. To make matters worse, in the soap opera that was The Order, the leader of the Holy Mother sect and Stone's best friend forever, George Rosten, was rumoured to be a member of Valtiel as well, which really pissed off the Saint Ladies no end, because the whole point was that the Valtiel Sect was supposed to be impartial. And to complicate things further, Leonard Wolf had gone and defected from Saint Ladies, probably because Dahlia was dead and the whole Alessa debaucle had been such a resounding failure, and now no one was even sure where his loyalties lay. It was a fairly tense time for the Church, politically, although luckily it was all talk. After Dahlia's plans had gone three sheets to the wind, no one was about to have another crack at bringing God into the world any time soon. So the Order was busied with fighting amongst itself, exploiting orphans and performing meaningless rituals, while the rest of the world passed it by in relative peace.

Vincent nodded at Claudia and she continued. "Have you heard of a ritual called the 21 Sacraments?"

He looked up with a start. He'd heard of it, yes, but he had only glanced over it as part of his studies, for historical purposes. It was one of the Holy Mother sect's sacred texts clearly written by a crazy person, included in the scriptures for posterity. Divided into three "signs", it was basically a license for a killing spree, with some mumbo jumbo thrown in. It was not, he felt sure, designed to ever be a how-to manual, unless the aim was "how-to get life in jail".

"Yes, I've read about it, but there's no way it'll work. I mean, it's not even a proper, viable ritual."

"No, I agree," Claudia nodded. He wasn't surprised. She was destined for Saint Ladies if anyone ever was. "Or at least, I thought I did. But that's besides the point. It doesn't matter. Alessa is out there somewhere, I know it, and one day she'll come back and..." her voice cracked a little. "But Stone wants to start the 21 Sacraments for the Descent of the Holy Mother, because he doesn't believe she'll ever come back."

"And you're upset because you don't think you'll ever get to play dolls with her again?" he snapped, in spite of himself. "Claudia, wherever Alessa is, she's better off away from The Order. Or don't you remember her being burned alive?"

"She'll come back, Vincent, and she'll birth God the way it's _supposed_ to happen."

"But if this ritual is all about the descent of the Holy Mother, then surely you should be happy. After all, isn't that Alessa?"

"Not in this instance. The Holy Mother could be anyone, any woman who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when the ritual is completed. And in the interim, Father Stone is planning a bloodbath."

"Claudia, I hate to break it to you, but The Order does have a rather strong tradition of human sacrifice..."

"Not like this, though. Vincent. This is too much, it's not how things are supposed to be. Alessa is supposed to birth God." She looked pained. "But that's not the half of it. Father Stone and Father Rosten have done something awful. Something deeply heretical. They've managed to use Valtiel to poison someone's mind, to make them into a killer, so they can start the 21 Sacraments."

"Don't tell me they've brainwashed some poor Wish House kid." He lit another cigarette, agitated now. This whole mess could only spell trouble. And as much as he hated to admit it, trouble for Claudia meant trouble for him as well.

She burst into sobs.

"Walter..." she said through tears. "They're going to use Walter..."


	3. Chapter 3

_AN: Chapter 3. Contains ten times more Vincent-snark than the leading brand. _

* * *

Vincent sprung to his feet with a start, his mouth half open. "Are you sure?" he blurted out, his smarmy composure gone.

She nodded, sniffing. "He didn't want to do it, and I...Stone and my father...I tried to stop him...I've always told Walter that he needs to let go of this notion that his mother will come back...it was the only thing we've ever fought about...but they told him that if he did it...well, they tricked him. And now he's going to start the first sign..."

The first sign. Ten hearts.

"And God said, At the time of fullness, cleanse the world with my rage. Gather forth the White Oil,  
the Black Cup and the Blood of the Ten Sinners. Prepare for the Ritual of the Holy Assumption." Vincent quoted aloud, shaking his head. "So he has to kill ten people?"

"And cut out their hearts," she finished. "Vincent, we have to stop this. This isn't right, it's heretical."

"Heretical?" Vincent spat. "Walter is about to start a killing spree, and you're worried about whether or not it's doctrinally valid?!"

"Alessa is supposed to birth God," she repeated earnestly. "We can't let the Holy Mother sect perform this ritual, or God will never be born properly, and the world will never see Paradise. And Walter...he'll go to Hell."

"Or, you know, alternatively, for those of us who're not _crazy_, we can't let Walter start organ harvesting, because it's fucking mental!" He cleared his throat, "Not to mention, if Walter starts making trouble, that means trouble for all of us. If he wants to kill a bunch of people and wind up in jail, that's his prerogative, but if the Order ends up falling foul of all this, then we're all screwed." He didn't really know why he cared. After all, wouldn't it be better for him if the Order did end up raised to the ground? But the Order was his current source of financial support, and without it, he would have no way of finishing university. Not to mention, he didn't exactly want to be around for any angry mob scenes which might crop up as a result. He had two choices, he could let the whole thing play out, then skip town if things got nasty, or he could stop it now and make life easier for himself in the long run. And besides, if the 21 Sacraments were successful, it could very probably mean the end of the world. And Vincent was rather attached to the world, all things considered.

Claudia nodded, "I know. I'm aware of that. But that's not my concern." She brushed a stray hair out of her eye. "Stone, Rosten, my father and many others are of the believe that when God is born, that only the chosen people, the believers, should be allowed into Her Paradise. That's partly why they're trying to do things like this. But Vincent, surely God will be born to save the whole world? We're all sinners, all of us, even the believers and the faithful. We have a duty to make sure everyone is saved, not just those of us fortunate enough to be enlightened."

"Save it, Claudia," he snapped. "It's crazy, over-zealous dogma that's gotten us into this mess in the first place."

"What are we going to do?" Claudia, bless her, might have been holier than thou, but when it came to plotting, she couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery. Vincent doubted that she'd ever done anything underhand in her life. Well, there was a first time for everything. He felt a strange, sickly thrill of exhilaration. He'd planned on spending his holidays getting laid, reading novels and smoking spliffs, but here he was, teaming up with the most unlikely of sidekicks to save the world from crazy cultists. Besides, he could tell that Claudia, for all her piety, had been itching for a legitimate chance to defy her father for years now. And if he was being honest, he himself had been waiting for a crack at Jimmy Stone for a while, too. His own experiences in Wish House at the hands of Stone and the other monsters might have broken a much lesser man.

Obviously, he wasn't terribly fond of getting his hands dirty, but his mind was already whirring with ways he could come out of this smelling of roses. "We need to go to Silent Hill," he said slowly, perhaps a little too dramatically, formulating a plan as he spoke, "And we need to find Stone and Walter, and make him reverse this whole mess. At whatever cost."

She nodded gratefully, her eyes still shining wet. "Thank you, Vincent."

"Yeah, well," he shrugged, "You owe me for ruining my holidays."He buttoned up his shirt and grabbed his wallet and her coat from the desk, holding it out. "Let's go."

* * *

The bus journey from Pleasant River to Silent Hill was a trying one, to say the least. Claudia was pestering him with incessant questions and worries, her voice rising in pitch to the point where he had to kick her and shoot her a glare, because people were starting to give them funny looks. His paranoia was somewhat increased by the fact that, for prudence's sake, they had taken a detour before going to the bus stop, and purchased a gun. He thought, wryly, that standing in a firearms shop with a soaking wet religious fanatic, casually explaining that he had recently developed an interest in home security, may have been one of the more surreal moments of his life. Said weapon was now shoved into his belt, hidden by his shirt, the cold metal digging uncomfortably into his skin. It was a vaguely reassuring presence, although he wasn't intending to use it.

As the bus pulled over beside Rosewater Park, they disembarked and stood for a moment. Claudia looked around anxiously, as if expecting her father to jump out from behind a wheelie bin at any moment.

"So, Claudia," he said, realising that he hadn't the faintest idea where to go from here. "Any ideas?"

"They took Walter to Wish House. It's been hours since, but Stone might still be there. And if not, then someone there will know where he is." She was almost whispering, her tone hushed.

It was true. Stone was heavily involved in the day to day running of the Orphanage. God alone knew why, since the man hated children with a passion. Perhaps he felt very strongly that the only way to properly rear children was to put the fear of God into them, quite literally. Vincent himself had been on the receiving end of Stone's wrath more than once, as a boy. Perversely, by contrast, Leonard Wolf was considered to be something of a more kindly uncle figure by the children, despite his treatment of his own daughter. He imagined that Claudia must resent this deeply, and often made vague allusions to this while taunting her.

It had stopped raining now, and they walked along in silence, Claudia's bare feet splashing through the remnants of puddles. He never could fathom why she rarely bothered with shoes. Perhaps it was some pointless outward show of asceticism. There were a couple of tourists here and there, who shot her some very odd looks.

"How quaint!" he heard a woman explain as she promenaded arm in arm with her boyfriend, or husband. She was pretty, if a little sickly looking, dressed rather primly in a crisp white floral dress and pink cardigan, and she was pointing directly at Claudia. The young man at her side smiled at her indulgently, but seemed a little embarrassed, offering them a vaguely apologetic look before hurrying her on towards Rosewater Park.

"You must really love attracting attention," he hissed at his blonde haired companion. He could feel a knot growing in his stomach as the neared the Orphanage. Suddenly this whole plan seemed rather foolish, and wildly dangerous. What business did two unordained novices have confronting a group of influential and high ranking Order members?

They were about to take the turn off for Wish House when Claudia grabbed his arm. "No," she murmured, a far away look on her face. "Not yet. We have to go to the Church."

"I thought you said..." he began, but trailed off and shrugged. Claudia and her Sight. Another one of the many reasons why being in her company was about as much fun as swallowing broken glass. By her early teenage years, a rather late blooming by most occult standards, she had developed the eerie ability to well..._see_ things. A sixth sense of some sort. Fearing that Leonard would try to use for some untoward purpose it, she'd tried to hide it, and had mostly succeeded. After all, who would believe crazy Claudia Wolf about anything, anyway. She was always rambling nonsense. But Vincent knew better than that, and he knew that when Claudia had a gut feeling, it was generally advisable to listen. She always seemed to know something that other people didn't. One time, he'd been about to go into town to buy some groceries, when Claudia had popped up out of nowhere, grabbed his arm and begged him to stay on campus. Perturbed, he'd tried to shake her off, called her a crazy bitch and lost vast credibility to his reputation when she proceeded to cling to him like a limpet. Eventually, he'd given in and agreed to go to the library instead. Later that day, he heard on the radio that the grocery store he'd been planning to visit had been the scene of an armed robbery. Claudia never mentioned the incident again, and nether had he, but from then on he'd always made a mental note to take her a little more seriously. Of course, it didn't mean he couldn't take the piss out of her from time to time, just that when she had a vision, it was perhaps advisable to take heed. "Church it is, then. But this had better not just be because you're getting cold feet and want to have a bit of a pray to stall for time."

"Trust me, Vincent," she said calmly. "And trust God."

Vincent felt quite certain that neither of these were a stellar idea, but he followed anyhow, as they abruptly turned off towards the amusement park. It was a fairly ridiculous thing to build a church underneath, he had often thought, although that might have been simply because filing to church with the other Orphans and watching all the happy families enjoying themselves on a Sunday at the fairground had always been a source of chagrin to him as a child. The church had since expanded in size from a catacomb like small series of rooms to be nigh on a full blown convent connected to the outside world, in a fit of abysmal fire safety planning, by a passage near the merry go round. Sensible architecture, Silent Hill style.

As they made their way through the yellowing walls of the passage, the sound of a man howling grew louder and louder, echoing from behind the door to the church. Claudia shook her head to herself and hastened her footsteps.

"Walter?" Vincent whispered as she put her hand on the doorknob. She nodded and swung the door open.

Walter Sullivan was kneeling before the altar, almost prostrate, his burly shoulders racked with sobs. Claudia ran towards him, neglecting even to genuflect, as per ritual, as she threw her arms about him. He looked up in blind confusion, put on hand on her pale cheek, and dissolved into hysterics again. Watching a grown man in such a state made Vincent feel distinctly uncomfortable. Watching Walter bury his face in Claudia's chest probably didn't exactly help that feeling of unease. He wondered, not for the first time, if there was something going on between those two. She continued to hold him tightly, her arms wrapped around him, her almost white hair mingling with Sullivan's dirty blonde locks, both dark clad and dishevelled. They made a rather poetic sight, he reflected with a hint of irony.

As he approached the two, he cleared his throat as he noticed dried blood around Walter's nose, which had spilled over his chin and encrusted itself. He put a heavy hand on the man's shoulder and gave what he hoped was a reassuring pat, accompanied with a cough. "Right, pull yourself together, Sullivan," he announced in a tone which was much braver than he felt, given that this man was destined to start harvesting organs at some point in the very near future.

"I tried to tell you, Vincent!" he exclaimed, in between incoherent babbling.

Claudia stroked his head and murmured little soothing "Shhh" noises. "Everything is going to be fine, Walter," she whispered to her friend, her voice having an instantly calming effect on him. Vincent was dumbfounded as to how the fuck Claudia could be a soothing influence on _anyone_.

"Right, either you two get a room, or we actually do something about this before it's too late," he sniffed.

"It's only been a few hours at most since Rosten, Stone and my father performed the Valtiel rite," Claudia said, "We can still reverse this before it does any permanent damage to Walter," she clasped his face in her long, pale fingers and nodded to him earnestly. "We can."

The misery on his face broke with a faint look of hope. "Claudia, I don't want to do it this way. I want to see my mother again, but not like this...not like..." he choked and spluttered.

"It'll be all right," she said briskly, with a glance at Vincent that told him she wasn't quite as sure as she sounded. "We're going to go to Wish House, and we're going to find Jimmy Stone, and make him undo this..."

"Yeah, that's a fantastic plan. Because I'm sure if we just ask nicely..." Vincent began with a sneer but Claudia stopped him in his tracks as her head snapped up and she met his gaze. Her pale eyes were glittering with a sort of wrath he had never seen before, a white hot anger which he was desperately glad he was not about to be on the receiving end of. She rose to her feet and grabbed the ritual athame dagger from the altar.

"Stone is a heretic," she snarled. "Let God judge him as such."

"Oh joy," Vincent muttered under his breath. Well, at least he could blame the crazy chick if this all went tits up.


	4. Chapter 4

_AN: Chapter four, everyone. Meet Jimmy Stone. Hobbies include darts, cosplaying executioners and being a self righteous prick. Enjoy._

They arrived at Wish House Orphanage with Walter propped up between them, one arm around Claudia's shoulder, and one around Vincent's. Claudia was still clutching the dagger from the church, and Vincent could still feel the reassuring presence of the cold metal of his firearm tucked into his waistband. They were quite the striking trio, Walter babbling incoherently, his nose and chin splattered with dry blood and Claudia openly wielding a knife, her pale face tinged with purple bruises. Luckily, the streets were all but deserted, but Vincent thought with an inward groan that it would be a miracle if someone didn't spot them and report them to the police.

He frowned to himself. Things were rather rapidly spiralling out of control. He hadn't planned on this ending up with a murder, but with Claudia livid beyond control at the state of her favourite pet, and Walter possibly possessed and definitely deranged, the prognosis of this little adventure was a little bleak. And the Order had their own ways of punishing transgressors, infinitely more disturbing forms of justice than the county court systems. But there was little alternative now than to go along and try to make sure Claudia and Walter didn't do anything irredeemably crazy. And if they did, well he could always plead that he'd gone to try and stop them.

"Ok, ok, stop!" Vincent exclaimed as they neared the entrance of the orphanage. "For a start, they are not going to let you two go anywhere near the inside of that place looking like a pair of homicidal maniacs." He produced a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Claudia. "You, put the knife away and wipe his face as best you can." He rounded on Walter, "And you, Sullivan, fucking straighten up and stop acting like you just escaped from Brookhaven basement. If you want a crack at Stone, there's no sense in getting stopped before you even get inside." As Walter desperately tried to regain his composure and Claudia dabbed at his face with the tissue, he drew himself up to his full height and wagged his finger under their noses. "As far as anyone is concerned, Claudia, we're just here to see Jimmy. We've found Walter, he's acting a little strangely, and we're very confused and concerned. All right?"

Claudia nodded, sneered and tucked the dagger into the pocket of her skirt.

"This is madness," Vincent announced to both of them with a resigned sigh. "Let's try and get Stone and Rosten to reverse whatever they've done to him without resorting to violence. Bear in mind that if something happens to them, people are going to point fingers in our direction, and it'll be our heads on the block."

"I'd rather die than let the 21 Sacraments happen," Claudia pointed out.

"Well, I wouldn't," Vincent replied levelly. "And remember, they don't call Stone the "Red Devil" for nothing."

They made their way into Wish House silently, Claudia's head bowed and Walter stumbling a little behind them. Vincent smiled brightly and nodded to the woman at the desk, before asking casually with thundering chest, "Is Father Stone around? We'd like a quick word with him, if that's all right."

"First floor," she replied, barely looking up. Why would she? Vincent and Walter were well known at Wish House as their two biggest successes, students at the nearby university, and ardent volunteers within the church. Everyone knew that those two were earmarked to become Priests. And Claudia was Leonard's daughter, a strange, unlikeable girl, but generally considered at least to be devout.

The rooms were all empty, the children must have been at dinner, Vincent reasoned. It was the first piece of luck they'd had that day. This was going to be messy enough as it was.

Jimmy was wandering through the corridor, his face and bald head obscured by his red hood, a nod to the executioners of Silent Hill in days gone by. What was that man's malfunction anyway?

"Father Stone?" Claudia's voice carried through the corridor, soft and quiet, but dripping with an underlying menace.

He whirled around with a start. "What do you kids..." he stopped as he noticed Walter lagging behind. "Ah. Predictable as ever, Miss Wolf. Your father always said you were a troublemaker. But you, Vincent? I'm surprised." Jimmy's tone of voice made Vincent suddenly feel as though he were confronting a villain in some Hellish version of Scooby Doo. Except here, the ghosts were all too real.

Vincent spread his hands and shrugged miserably. He was equally as surprised at himself. These were the kinds of situations you ended up in once you started letting yourself feel sorry for people. He coughed. "We're not here for a confrontation. We just want to know what's been done to Walter, and if we can fix it."

"Fix it?" Stone snorted with derisive laughter. "My dear boy, why would you want to do that? Walter is going to do something very important, something glorious for God's chosen people." He began to advance towards them menacingly. "I suggest you _children_ leave this to the church Elders. Our plans for Walter are none of your concern."

"The 21 Sacraments is all of our concern!" Claudia exclaimed. "Stone, you are committing heresy!"

"By whose doctrine, Miss Wolf?" he sneered. "The Saint Ladies?"

"By God's law," she spat.

"Look, Father Stone," Vincent tried to be reasonable. "This isn't about theology or doctrine. We're just concerned that if you force Walter to become a killer, then it'll draw attention to the whole Order and we'll end up with a full scale police investigation." He gestured around him, "And some of our practices are not exactly what you'd call law abiding. Bodies start cropping up and soon people are going to be asking questions, about Wish House, about White Claudia, about our rituals, our sacrifices, about Alessa...it's a recipe for disaster. I understand why you want to do this, but you have to think of the practicalities of it. There are other ways to bring about God, just not like this, and not right now."

Stone was about to speak up when Walter, who had been vaguely leaning against Claudia throughout this whole discourse, suddenly stood upright and roared at the top of his voice "What did you DO to me, Red Devil?"

Vincent looked at him sharply. His eyes glinting wildly in his blood spattered face left no one in the room in any doubt that Sullivan was unhinged. Seriously unhinged, and not just in his usual vaguely amusing "my mother is an apartment room and I want to shag her" kind of way.

Vincent could _feel _ Stone smirking behind his hood as he reached into his robes and produced a page of scripture. "And God said, "Offer the blood of ten sinners and the White Oil. Be then released from the bonds of the flesh, and gain the Power of Heaven. From the Darkness and Void, bring forth Gloom and gird thyself with despair for the Giver of Wisdom..."

"What the fuck does that even _mean_?!" Vincent exclaimed in spite of himself. "This is insane! You're risking all our lives and our livelihoods over a scrap of paper, on the outside chance that it might actually be the word of God!"

Claudia looked at the hooded priest and withdrew her dagger silently. "Father Stone," she said quietly, her voice dripping with a menace and fanaticism which chilled the air, "Elder of the Order of not, you commit heresy and spit in the very face of God. You have turned your back on Her word, and your impatience has caused you to lose faith, despite the fact that the real Holy Mother is alive, and God already slumbers in her womb, waiting for the right time to create Paradise. You use your power and you use our faith for your own ends, and not for the salvation of mankind. You will go to Hell, Father Stone. You will burn." She had that slightly too calm, slightly too matter of fact tone which made Vincent wonder if she was going to suddenly snap and stab somebody.

"On whose authority, Claudia Wolf?" he sneered. "Do you think that a lecture from a novice, some simple, idealistic little fool, is going to prevent the 21 Sacraments from happening? The wheels are in motion now, children. Not even Walter can stop this."

Vincent rolled his eyes, and looked first at Claudia, burning with righteous indignation, and Walter, who seemed as though he might throw up. It wasn't really looking as though things were going to be resolved with a cup of tea and a nice healthy injection of rationality. Up until now, everything the three of them had done could be forgiven, explained away, punished and then forgotten. But if he was going to put a stop to this, there was really only one course of action available to him now. He pulled out his gun. "Father Stone, I don't want to use this, but I assure you, if it means stopping this madness, I will."

Stone laughed, a cold, manic sort of mirth. Vincent failed to see the funny side as he looked Claudia straight in the eye and told her, "Claudia, you have to leave now." It wasn't that he was protecting her, he told himself. He just didn't want her going into hysterics if he was forced to go through with shooting someone. Killing, violence, bloodshed...it always made her cry. She should really have gone and become a Catholic nun, not a Priestess in a demon worshipping cult that burned kids alive. After all, it didn't really matter what she believed, at the end of the day. The important thing for Claudia, he often suspected, was simply faith itself.

"I'm not going anywhere," she shot back.

"Claudia," he thrust the gun under her nose, "You wanted me to help you. You wanted me to put an end to this before scores of people start dying. YOU came to ME for help, and I'm giving you it. But you have to, for once in your life, trust my judgement. There is nothing helpful you can do here. If you really want to do something useful, then go and wait outside!" He surprised himself, his voice rising to a feverish yell, his hands shaking. Claudia seemed shocked too; he postulated that it had been a very long time since she'd seen him lose his composure on such a grand scale. Stone was still laughing like a madman. He lowered his voice. "The children will be coming back any time now." He thought that might just work. If Claudia would leave for any reason, it would be to spare all the little orphans from walking in on a gun fight. She was predictable like that.

"Walter?" she asked in a small voice.

"Get OUT!" Sullivan screamed, clutching his head, as though trying to drown out the whole situation.

With tears brimming in her eyes, she clutched Vincent's arm. He grabbed her hand for the briefest of moments. "Claudia Wolf, don't you trust me?" he demanded. He would look back on that, no doubt, and cringe at his own melodrama.

"I will pray for you," she sniffed. She flung her arms around him and reached out for Walter's hand at the same time. "For all of you. I'll be outside if you need me."


	5. Chapter 5

_AN: Presenting chapter five of a bad debt which still won't wait. With MOAR violence, strong language, scared orphans and Vincent-snark than your average Doomsday cult can shake a stick at. Apologies to everyone that I owe correspondence to, I've been a little busy with my personal life going to utter Hell. Luckily I have a huge whack of this bastard thing pre-written, so I can stick to trying to update weekly. Fingers crossed that I may actually manage to keep a story going long enough to have a plot and reach a conclusion, for the first time in my life._

Vincent raised his gun solemnly, unsure of himself for a moment as the door closed and Claudia was gone. Still, at least he'd done something vaguely heroic, and taken care of the women and children. Although, if things were still the same in Wish House, he imagined all the little orphans would probably stand and cheer for anyone who was levelling a gun at Stone.

"There's nothing you can do, Vincent," Stone taunted him. "Do you really think I'm afraid to die?"

"No, Father Stone, I don't."

"That gun won't make a blind bit of difference, curate."

"I think it will," he replied sadly, "Shooting you won't stop anything, I know that." He gritted his teeth, raising his firearm and aiming it directly at Walter's head.

Shoot the fucking messenger. It was the only way to prevent a bloodbath. And while Walter wasn't exactly his first choice as someone to be seen with in public, he was still his childhood companion, still someone he cared about. But there wasn't a whole lot of alternative. That was why it had been so important to get Claudia out of the way. He couldn't see Stone's face, but he could hear a gasp of horror from under that ridiculous hood. "Walter, I'm so sorry. But I can't let this go any further."

Walter seemed to calm down considerably as soon as he was staring down the barrel of a gun. He smiled in an eerie kind of way.

"And God said," Stone proclaimed with a shaking voice, "Return to the Source through sin's temptation. Under the watchful eye of the demon, wander alone in the formless Chaos. Only then will the Four Atonements be in alignment..."

"Stone, will you stop that SHIT?!" Vincent yelled. His face was chalk white, and he had never felt more out of his depth as he did at that moment. "It's over." He curled his finger tightly around the trigger with a shaking hand. "It's..."

Walter let out a scream and bent double. For a moment, Vincent thought that perhaps he was afraid to die, that perhaps this was going to be harder than he first envisaged. As Walter knelt on the floor, he jammed the gun into the back of his head. He was about to shoot, when he noticed that Walter's skin seemed to be crawling with red veins of blood.

It was this moment's horror and hesitation which cost him his weapon. With an almost inhuman roar, Walter Sullivan launched himself at Vincent, his irises having turned a hellish pitch black, and knocked the gun out of his hand.

"Fuck!" Vincent exclaimed, wincing as he tried to wrestle Sullivan off his chest, tried to fumble for the weapon, but Walter was faster, stronger, and altogether more _possessed by a fucking demon _than he was. Vincent looked up at Stone standing there, every inch the Red Devil, every inch the executioner, caught his eye through the hood, and suddenly realised that the cryptic babble he'd just recited had been more than simply the zealous ravings of someone who'd spent too much time in church. Stone hadn't just been quoting scripture, he'd been performing an incantation. God damn it to Hell, he should've shot Stone first _then _dealt with Sullivan. The priest had set something off in Walter, and his own hesitation had let it happen.

"It's too LATE!" Walter hissed, his face contorted in pain. Vincent saw the handle of the gun coming towards his face, he squeezed his eyes shut on reflex, and a split second later felt cold hard metal smash into his face, breaking his glasses. His head slumped back and he lost consciousness to the tune of the Red Devil's laughter.

* * *

When Vincent came to, his first thought was that he couldn't breath. His nose was utterly choked with crusted brown blood, his throat sticky and his head throbbing. He groped around for his gun, then remembered all at once what had happened.

"Shit," he groaned, propping himself up on his elbows and adjusting the bent remnants of his spectacles so he could see in the now darkened corridor. "Oh fuck. Oh please no. Fuck...God, if you're listening..."

Sitting cross legged on the floor now, he peered down the corridor to where the priest had been standing, but both Stone and Sullivan were gone. He exhaled in slight relief. He didn't know how long he'd been unconscious for, but perhaps there was still a chance he could catch them. Perhaps maybe even Claudia had caught them. Perhaps Stone had killed Claudia. Perhaps...perhaps he'd better get a fucking move on. He put his left hand down on the cold, bare floor, and then his right and...

"Oh Mother of GOD!" he cried out as his fingers found, not the stone of the corridor, but something cold and sticky. He pulled his hand back as though it was burning, and saw his fingers stained red, as he fell back. Slowly, he turned onto his right side, and found himself staring into the cold, dead eyes of Father Jimmy Stone, his countenance glassy and still partially obscured by his hood. Suddenly he became horribly aware of his surroundings, of the sticky smears on the walls, of the pool of blood which stained his shirt and trousers. He examined Stone more closely. The back of his head was missing, blown apart, no doubt by Vincent's very own gun. The thought made him sick, and he could feel the acrid taste of vomit rising in his mouth. And Stone's garments were ripped, a gaping hole in his chest.

Vincent didn't have to look any closer to work out that Father Stone's heart was AWOL.

"What have you _done_, Walter?!" he shouted aloud in utter despair, scrambling away from the body as though being close to it for one more second would somehow implicate him in this whole mess.

Clutching the wall, he pulled himself to his feet, bent double, and threw up.

* * *

After he'd composed himself slightly, he went to look for Claudia. She'd know what to do. She'd _better_ know what to do. She'd better not be dead.

"...we hold our sorrows within us. Only you can heal us these wounds. Each morning, afternoon, evening and night, we call out your name and pray for the day of the Miraculous Descent. I give to you unreservedly, my body and my eternal soul.Whatever darkness may befall me, I will endure with you beside me..." Suddenly Vincent could make out the hushed tones of children whispering, amidst a shaking voice which was struggling to stay composed. He walked through the deserted orphanage until the voices grew cleared, staggering along and putting his ear to every door until he found the source.

"...as long as we have you in our hearts. Oh Lord, save us with your compassion. Oh Lord, shower us with your blessings. Oh Lord..."

He knocked on the door feebly and heard Claudia shushing the children into silence. There was a long pause.

"Who is it?"

"It's me." His voice came out rasping, almost unrecognisable as his own.

"Vincent?" There was a scraping sound, and he half threw himself, half tumbled into her arms. If he'd been a lesser man, he might have burst into tears. She held him upright for a moment, then motioned to some of the children to clear a space for him on the sparse bed on which they were all huddled. With her cold hands guiding him, he could feel his legs almost giving out beneath him, steadied only by her rigid embrace about his shoulder. She sat down beside him and one of the children crawled onto her lap, a little girl staring up at them both dumbly, with the trademark sunken eyes and hunted look of the lost children of the Wish House. Wish House. What an apt name for a place that made you wish you were dead. They instantly began to flock closely about her, clinging to her skirt, huddling into her for protection as they all stared silently in unison at the blood soaked young acolyte who had just interrupted their fearful vigil.

"Stone's dead," he blurted out. "Oh, God, Claudia, he's dead."


	6. Chapter 6

_AN: Presenting Chapter 6 of A Bad Debt Won't Wait,in which Vincent and Claudia deal with a tense situation in the only way they know how: by bickering like a couple of children and getting into even more trouble._

"_Stone's dead," he blurted out. "Oh, God, Claudia, he's dead."_

There was a shocked gasp from the orphans, and Claudia put her arms around the little one on her lap and held onto her tightly, for dear life. Some of the older boys on the floor began whispering amongst each other in a mixture of horror and morbid delight, but one disapproving glance from Claudia was enough to command absolute silence. She looked at him calmly for a few moments, then her composure dissolved.

"Vincent, I heard the gunshot three hours ago!" she suddenly exclaimed. "What in God's name has been happening?"

Three hours. So Walter could be anywhere, and they had a dead priest on their hands. "Oh God, they'll kill us, Claudia. The Order are literally going to flay us alive..." He could feel himself starting to sob, hating himself for it, but utterly unable to stop it. He was, after all, still just a young man, barely out of his teens, and even by a Wish House brat's standards, this was easily the most horrific experience of his life. Some of the children began to cry with him.

"We're going to get the blame, Claudia. They'll say it's all our fault."

"You killed him?" Evidently she also thought that the situation was far too out of control to even bother sparing the ears of the kids.

"Fuck no!"

"Watch your language, Vincent." Or perhaps not.

"And fuck you too!" he yelled. "Walter killed him. He shot him in the back of the head and cut out his fucking HEART!"

"Why didn't you stop him?" She began to wring her hands, clutching at her hair anxiously. Suddenly she seemed on the verge of hysterics. It seemed to rub off on the children, who began to shift about restlessly.

Vincent stood up suddenly and all but screamed at her. "Because he fucking pistol whipped me, you stupid bitch!" He abruptly covered his mouth with his hand, almost shocked at the sound of his own voice. It wasn't that he was even particularly angry at Claudia, he was just...scared. And of course, screaming and swearing like a madman, while covered in blood, in a cramped room full of frightened orphans was always a fantastic way to deal with the fact that your childhood friend had just begun a killing spree to bring a demon God into the world and burn everything in a fiery inferno. Ten points Vincent.

Claudia didn't react, her watery eyes unblinking. She simply hugged the crying children tighter. He thought that perhaps part of his rising anger was because she didn't seem to be doing anything, or fixing anything. In fact, he was fairly certain that if she could stay in this room forever with these kids and just block it all out, she'd be happy. But that was Claudia all over. If she didn't like something, she just blocked it all out with religion. Sure, she'd had a hard life, but hadn't they all? It was no excuse for being delusional.

He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to her feet, knocking the kid sprawling off her lap in the process. "Claudia, now is not the time for you to be useless," he said firmly, although much calmer now. "We have to do something."

"What is there to do?" she asked miserably, her voice cracking with the hopelessness that he himself felt all too keenly.

"I don't know. Stone awakened something in Walter, and now the bastard's dead and we can't undo it."

"Unless we can find a way...there must be something. It's useless going to Rosten or my father, but there has to be books somewhere, sacred texts..."

It was a fairly long shot that there were texts, especially ones that they could access, but at least it was a decisive course of action. And for sanity's sake, they needed to feel as though they weren't being completely useless.

"We can take the kids to the church, and then start looking," he said with a nod. "It's not a great plan, but it's better than sitting around waiting for the shit to hit the fan."

"I agree," she responded. Then, as an afterthought, with a slight sneer, "Although perhaps a little less heavy on the profanities."

"There's a priest with his heart cut out in the next room and a possessed killer on the loose," he shot back dryly. "I think that merits something a little stronger than "Oh, my goodness"." They were sniping at each other again. It was a reassuring injection of normalcy in an otherwise horrific situation.

She squeezed his arm and smiled up at him weakly. "Let's go." She looked over her shoulder. "Come along, children. Wish House is not a safe place at present, so stay close to us and we'll take you to the Church."

"Miss Wolf, is the church safe?" a little boy piped up anxiously.

She turned around, bent down and clasped his face in her hands. "Of course, little one. The church is always safe. It's where God lives." Vincent found himself wishing, in a strange and mournful kind of way, that there had been some maternal presence to smile so kindly down at him when he'd been a kid. But if you had too many of those kind of yearnings, you ended up like Sullivan. He shook the thought away like an unwanted cobweb in his head, and took the lead as they filed out down the dark corridors.

They had made it no more than halfway down the corridor when they heard the sound of footsteps and the low rumble of men's voices. Some of the children looked up questioningly, but Claudia raised a finger to her lips, and they thankfully remained silent, standing shivering within those dark, dank walls.

Vincent tensed in the shadows and glanced at Claudia, nodding curtly at one of the doors in the long corridor. She opened it with a creak which seemed to scream with a telltale voice throughout the entire orphanage, and began to usher the children inside.

"Stay here, dears," she whispered, "And be as quiet as mice."

Closing the door behind her, she joined Vincent's side, putting her bony hand lightly on his arm. The sinews stood out like spidery cords in the semi-darkness and he almost turned away in disgust.

"If we wait for them to go, we can maybe sneak out," he said in the lowest of voices, his throat rasping.

"We can't leave the children," she replied obstinately.

"Claudia," he caught her by the shoulders. "You might have forgotten, but this is their home." He could see from her face that she harboured some deluded little fantasy of taking them all away from this hellhole, of becoming mother to all of them, of being needed and loved and surrounding herself with something innocent. He had the briefest of moments of indulgence where he wondered what it would be like to turn this place into a happy home. Being one himself, he had a soft spot for orphans, but wishing wouldn't change anything. Maybe when he was a priest, if he ever made it that far after this fiasco, he could do something, but for now they were both powerless. Powerless, and in a whole shitheap of trouble.

"But if Walter's..." she began, but he silenced her immediately with a scoff.

"He's out for the blood of "sinners", you read the text. Besides, he's still Walter. He would never, not in a million years, hurt a child." It was true. Walter was too much of a bleeding heart that Vincent couldn't imagine, even with demonic possession, the greasy haired mother's boy himself laying a finger on a little kid. He would never go that far, Vincent told himself, he just didn't have it in him.

"I know but..."

"Claudia, will you fucking drop it with the kids? We need to focus on getting the fuck as far away from this as possible. We're already in trouble, we've already been seen by the receptionist. If we get the Hell out now, we can at least take some time to think about where we go from here."

There was a loud exclamation of disgust and they both jumped. Evidently whoever was here (and he could make a bastard good guess that it was probably Rosten and company) had found Stone. Who was now literally heartless, instead of just metaphorically. Vincent afforded himself a miserable little smirk at his own internal joke.

Another thought occurred to him and he groaned inwardly. If Rosten, or anyone else, came across the children, they would spill the beans instantaneously. After all, little boys and girls who lied went straight to Hell. They really were screwed.

"We need to get out of here and get back to Pleasant River. At least there, we're outwith The Order's jurisdiction and we can call the cops if someone comes after us."

"No, Vincent, we have to go to the Church. It's the only safe place."

"Are you fucking nuts?" It was a fairly redundant question. "We need to get out of town!"

"We need to find out how to stop what's happening to Walter."

"Fuck Walter. Fuck the 21 Sacraments. I agreed to help, Claudia, not get myself flayed alive by the Valtiel sect. We need to cut and run, now, while we still can."

"We can't just abandon him. And we have to make sure this ritual is stopped before it gets out of control and Walter condemns his own soul to Hell in the process."

"I think there's a few more important things at stake than whether or not Walter goes to Hell. Like...gee...I don't know...us not getting lynched!"

"Do you care more about your own personal safety than about God's law?" she demanded. They were both hissing in angry stage whispers now, the heat of the argument carrying their voices louder.

"Actually, yes. Yes I fucking do. And so would you if you hadn't been brainwashed by that corrupt old witch Gillespie."

"What does Mother Dahlia have to do with this? Don't you dare speak ill of her!"

He clenched his fists in anger. She was so obtuse that it made his blood boil. She simply had no grasp on reality whatsoever. He was panicking now, seriously panicking. All his composure had been used up and he was running on empty as the shock wore off and the severity of things hit him like a ton of bricks. "I'm getting out of here. This was a mistake, you're a crazy bitch, and I hate you for dragging me into all this."

"Wise words indeed, curate."

The bickering pair suddenly jumped like scared rabbits at the intrusion of this new voice, and he whirled around.

Vincent could feel his pounding heart sink in his chest as he found himself face to face with Leonard Wolf.


	7. Chapter 7

_AN: Presenting Chapter Seven, with added batshit crazy Leonard "You've Come To Steal My Ribena" Wolf, and a young Vincent wangsting harder than a My Chemical Romance fan. Possibly not the best chapter ever, in retrospect._

* * *

With a shaved head and cruel face, Leonard Wolf towered over both of them with his impressive stature and a piercing sneer that he had only ever seen on the face of one other person. His daughter. There was no such stony resolve from her now, however. At the sight of her father, she blanched a sickly pale, frozen to the spot with her mouth open. "This is quite the little mess you two have caused, is it not?"

"W...we...we just...Walter was acting really weird and...well, we went to talk to Father Stone and then..."

"Then, no doubt under the influence of my good for nothing daughter, you goaded Sullivan into killing Jimmy!" Leonard roared, his voice echoing in the dank hallway.

"No! I don't know...Walter knocked me out and then I woke up and Father Stone was..."

"So this is all _your_ doing, then?" he demanded of Claudia, his lips curled back in a feral snarl. She shook her head mutely, her hands shaking.

"No, she wasn't even here!" he exclaimed on her behalf. "She was looking after the kids. You can ask them yourself!"

"I wouldn't trust the word of a child any more than I would trust the word of a heathen," he spat.

"But it's the truth!" he spread his hands in what he hoped was a vaguely pacifying gesture. But he could tell that Leonard was out for blood. He'd just found his friend dead, and he was looking for someone, _anyone_ to punish. "We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"You were, perhaps," he growled. "I can see from the state of you that you weren't a willing participant in this." Vincent had to admit that, covered in blood, with his glasses, and possibly his nose, broken, he was probably giving off that impression. Which was a good thing, something he could play on to save his own skin, at least. But as strong as the desire for self-preservation was, he wasn't about to leave Claudia to take the blame for this. Especially since she had barely been involved. Especially since Leonard was a monster. He'd beaten her unconscious, once, for whispering to him in church. He'd kill her for this, for certain.

"Claudia had nothing to do with this, Father Wolf. You have to believe me. She was with the children the whole time."

"Vincent, I am warning you. Don't even think about lying to me to protect her." He leaned in closely and hissed. "Trust me when I say she is not worth it."

Vincent glanced at her fearful face, tears welling up in her eyes as she stared dumbly at her father like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a truck. And the tugging in his chest made him not so sure that Leonard was right about that one.

"Please Father Wolf...Leonard..." he lowered his voice to a whisper, "Don't..."

He was cut so very short as Leonard backhanded him across the face. It stung, but it was more of a gesture than an intent to wound, a reminder of his authority. "I will only warn you one more time, curate. Get the Hell out of here. Go and repent your stupidity before God."

Vincent rubbed his jaw plaintively, staring at Claudia, searching in her face, in the trembling curve of her bottom lip, for some kind of absolution. She swallowed loudly, as if speaking was suddenly an alien concept. "You should go..." she whispered. "It'll be all right."

Evidently she didn't see any sense in both of them going down together. And frankly, neither did he, although it didn't make him feel like any less of an utter bastard.

"Are you deaf, boy?" Leonard rapped. Vincent had never felt more helpless in his life. Walter was a murderer, Stone was dead, and now Claudia was probably going to...well, that simply did not bear thinking about. He could only hope that big bad Wolf wasn't psycho enough to kill his own kid.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, his feet still planted to the spot, as though he was physically unable to walk away from this.

"That is no longer any of your concern. I would suggest you simply be thankful that my daughter's poison hasn't spread far enough to rob your of your senses."

"She's not, she's..." She might not have been poison, but Claudia Wolf was certainly a magnet for bad luck. Considering how devout she was, he thought it a little unfair of the Almighty not to cut her some slack every now and then.

"I have had enough of this foolishness," Leonard thundered. "You can heed my advice, or you can stay here and wait for Sullivan to make you his next victim, but we are leaving. And if you so much as think about trying to follow, you will not live to regret it." He suddenly felt like a kid again. Big bad Leonard, with his big, bold grandiose threats. Threats which were entirely serious, and that he was entirely capable of carrying out. "Come, Claudia." He gripped her arm tightly enough to make her whimper and Vincent closed his eyes. "We have much to discuss." Leonard Wolf had a unique take on the concept of "discussion", which generally involved his fists.

He watched impotently as Leonard dragged his daughter off into the darkness at the end of the corridor, before simultaneously punching the wall and letting out a single sob of utter frustration through his gritted teeth. It was all just so bastard _unfair_.

* * *

He knew better than to try to follow Leonard, and he also knew that the more he pissed him off, the worse it would be for Claudia. Eventually he went back into the room where the children were, seeking out some kind of human comfort for himself and feeling like shit for doing so. As soon as he entered, they crowded around him in a little gaggle, knowing better than to ask questions, but looking at him with the most ardent curiosity nevertheless.

He sat down amongst them and said absolutely nothing. He continued to say nothing for three hours until the receptionist eventually came in and quietly asked him if he would stay to take care of the children for a few days, while the Valtiel sect sorted out the whole Stone mess. He could sleep in one of the spare children's rooms, she said. She didn't seem too cut up about Jimmy being dead. He could imagine that not very many people were. He agreed for two reasons. Firstly, if you were smart, you didn't say no to The Order. Ever. And secondly, he'd rather be in close proximity to Claudia than go back to Pleasant River. He imagined she was probably being tortured at that very moment. All sorts of horrible images ran through his mind. He had witnessed Leonard's cruelty towards his daughter over and again, throughout the years, and they had all been for such minor transgressions that he could not imagine what Hell this would unleash in the Wolf household. Not to mention, there was still a deranged killer on the loose in the form of Walter Sullivan, and whatever had taken a hold of him, it was probably fairly angry at Vincent for turning a gun on it. Still, there was no alternative but to stay.

* * *

Over the next few days, it was almost more than his self restraint could stand not to go to the Wolf house. His mind was conjuring up all sorts of horrible images, and he choked them down bitterly as he tried his best to see to the running of the Orphanage. He would see Leonard dead for this, one day, he vowed to himself. One day, when he was the one with the money, and the power.

But the only way to get to that position, to change things from the inside, was to play ball. Hopefully, if Claudia survived this, she would start to see things from his point of view, she would start to realise first hand that fanaticism could only lead to destruction.

Luckily there were plenty of things to keep him busy. He didn't know how long he'd be left running this place, and he hadn't the first clue how to go about running a children's home, but he'd be damned if he was going to follow Jimmy Stone's schedule. The first thing he did was let out the smattering of kids who were locked in those disgusting cells in the basement. Two of them had to be taken to the hospital. The good thing about Brookhaven, like most places in this horrible little town, was that The Order had their claws in where the administration was concerned, so there would be no knocks on the door about child abuse. But he was certain that Stone would not have even bothered to send the kids for medical attention. How many children had died here and had their deaths covered up? He could remember being fed that old line as a boy that none of them had believed, that when one of their friends suddenly disappeared, they'd been "adopted". Over the years "adoption" had become a euphemism for a horrible death. The word still made him shudder.

The kids could scarcely believe their luck. He had called an assembly and announced that, for the time being, there would be no rising at five in the morning, there would be no lessons, that they would be free to play in the grounds during the day, instead of being locked in their little cell-like rooms. It was gratifying to hear a cheer go up. He stressed that it would be a temporary situation, and things would return to normal soon, once The Order installed a replacement for Father Stone. He didn't want to get their hopes up that life was going to improve for them. But this was probably as close to a holiday as they were going to get. He would still take them to church once a day, as was custom, but maybe, just once or twice, they could actually stop at the amusement park for a change on the way home. It wasn't that he much felt like going to the funfair, or indeed that he much felt like anything besides caving Leonard Wolf's head in with a baseball bat, but he had to keep a level head. Besides, sticking two fingers to Stone's abusive regime gave him a small sense of satisfaction. And Claudia would be delighted when he told her.

If he ever saw her again.

He shook his head. Of course he would.


	8. Chapter 8

_AN: I know it's been a while, and thank you so much to everyone who reviewed and asked me to continue. I've had this sitting on my computer for ages, I just hadn't been much in the mood for the internet for a while. Anyhow, I thought, there's no harm in uploading, since I've got a fair bit of this story written and just lying about. In this chapter, Vincent has a unique take on prayer, and negociates with more batshit mental cultists.  
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There was a small chapel in Wish House, for Stone's private use, he suspected, and he spent much of his time there, poring over the late priest's books and notes. But he knew fine well he wasn't going to find anything useful. Jimmy Stone had been far too clever a man to leave a paper trail, especially when he knew that, at very least, he'd be facing opposition from the Saint Ladies. Although those cowards seemed to be making themselves scarce at the moment. He had called on the houses of some of the sisters, but had received no reply. Whatever they were up to at the moment, they weren't in a talkative mood. He could only hope that they had something up their sleeves and weren't just burying their head in the sand. If he could just get a hold of those crazy witches, maybe he could implore their intercession. He'd just have to keep trying.

Rubbing his temples, he looked at the picture of Jennifer Carroll on the wall behind the altar and glared at her. The tall blonde in the portrait reminded him a little of Claudia. He could see that same fervent glint in the eyes, that same sun-starved fanaticism.

"This is all your fault, you know," he growled at the painting of the martyr. "You had to go and start a fucking cult, then get yourself killed before you could stop it all getting out of hand. Is _this_..." he gestured expansively around the chapel, "...what you had in mind? Kids being tortured, people being burned alive, blood sacrifices, people getting their hearts cut out...what the fuck were you thinking?"

He began to pace the chapel angrily, before turned around and levelling an accusing finger at the picture, his voice ringing out, irate and echoing. "Well I'll tell you something, _Saint _Jennifer. If you're such best pals with God, you better..._better_...make sure that that crazy bastard Wolf doesn't kill Claudia, because she's about the only person in this whole fucked up place who's actually still upholding your big noble plan to save this world. So you fucking owe us that at least." He could feel tears stinging his eyes as he continued his rather unorthodox prayer. If Claudia was here she'd probably be torn between laughing at him, and yelling at him for blaspheming. "Please. Just...please help us stop this. You fucking founded this religion, it's your fucking ideologies that are on the line here. If you're listening, then help us."

"Amen." There was a woman's voice behind him and he spun around, annoyed that someone would dare interrupt his very private moment of madness. "Although it was perhaps not the most eloquently expressed prayer I've ever heard, young man."

He found himself staring face to face with Rosalind Kaufman, the current head of the Saint Ladies sect, dressed in black from head to toe and wearing a mantilla. A serene looking, grey haired woman in her sixties, her younger brother, Michael, had been Dahlia's consort during the whole Alessa fiasco, a corrupt, drug dealing doctor with the manners of a swine, who preyed on pretty little nurses. He was long dead, and Rosalind had quietly used her brother's "martyrdom" to advance her standing among the Saint Ladies, and eventually take Dahlia's former place as head of the sect. But she had proven to be quite instrumental in turning things around after the shame of Dahlia's failed plans to have Alessa birth God, and upkeeping the Saint Ladies reputation as a group that were not to be trifled with.

"So you've finally decided to show up." He let out a long hiss of breath. "And where the Hell have you lot been?"

"Trying to find a way to stop young Mr Sullivan," she replied calmly. "It's taken up all of our resources. I apologise if you've been feeling...ignored." She was perfectly polite, but there always seemed to be a hidden barb to her words. She offered him a pinched little smile.

"And?" he clenched and unclenched his fists animatedly. "Have you found anything? Can we put an end to this?"

She spread her hands and shook her head sadly. "I'm afraid it's beyond our control now, young man. The only thing we can hope for is that Alessa will make herself known to us before the 21 Sacraments are completed."

"That's it?" he spat.

"You have to remember that the ritual of the 21 Sacraments will take years and years to complete," she chided. "We have plenty of time."

"And in the meantime we just leave Walter to go about collecting hearts?" It was typical of the Saint Ladies. Completely apathetic, even when the entire world was at stake. He had long suspected that the only things Rosalind Kauffman cared about were threats to her own power, and evidently she'd worked out that, regardless of what Sullivan did, she would be sitting pretty.

"No, of course not. We'll keep trying."

"Well, what about right now. What about Claudia?"

"How Leonard Wolf chooses to discipline his own daughter is none of our concern."

"She's not a child! She's a grown woman! And, as a sister of The Order, you have a duty to help her!"

"What business is it of ours?" Rosalind seemed genuinely puzzled as to the source of his anger.

"Because she's practically one of you!"

"If Miss Wolf expressed any desires to become a Saint Lady, it's certainly news to us." The older woman shrugged. "She is of no interest to us. Of all the current acolytes, it's well known that she is unbalanced, headstrong, and of entirely no use to our cause. She would be a liability." Rosalind suddenly looked sly. "Yourself, however...now that is a different matter entirely. Tell me, Vincent, have you thought about where you'll end up when you finish your schooling?"

"How can you say that?" he exploded. "How can you stand there so calm when..."

She raised a finger to silence him. "This is merely a visit of courtesy, to inform you that your efforts have been noted, but we are taking care of the situation as best we can." She narrowed her eyes. "So I suggest you turn your priorities to running this place in keeping with a church establishment, instead of letting the children run riot in the yard."

"Go to Hell," he muttered.

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Vincent. I'll be leaving now," she replied calmly.

Suddenly something very important, and very obvious occurred to him. "Wait!" he exclaimed. He pursed his lips, adjusted his broken glasses, and raised a thoughtful finger aloft. "Indulge me for a moment Sister Rosalind."

"Very well."

"How many among us, in the past twenty years, have been gifted with the gift of Sight?"

"You know full well the answer to that question, boy. Dahlia and Alessa Gillespie."

"And that's it?"

"Yes. And now, if you have no more pointless questions..."

"But Dahlia is dead, and Alessa is missing. A Seer in your ranks would be immensely valuable to you, would it not?"

"Of course it would. But there are no such persons among the ranks of _any_ of the sects at the moment."

"But if you had one, you'd be more powerful than the others."

"I told, you, we've already checked every child born in the past twenty years."

"What about late developers?"

"There's no such thing. It's simply not possible. I don't know where you're going with this, but..."

"Claudia has the Sight," he blurted out. "But it didn't fully develop until after the fire."

"That's ridiculous! Her father would have..."

"Her father doesn't know," he said, waving a finger. He felt a little more in control now, despite the dangerous little game he was playing. But manipulation had always been where his talents lay. He could almost see Rosalind's ears perk up. "She kept it hidden for fear that the Valtiel sect would use her for their own ends." Poor Claudia. Everyone thought that she was just mad. Little did they know that she was both mad and psychic. "Does that perhaps...affect your official stance on the matter?" he asked slyly.

"You're lying."

"I swear before God and St Jennifer that I am telling you the truth. And you might want to get to her quickly, because the only other person who knows is Walter and, well, he's a bit of a loose canon at the moment..." He smirked bitterly to himself as she watched him with a greedy look on her face. Of course, they would save someone if they could use them later. But Claudia was planning on joining them anyhow. If she'd known that they'd been set on rejecting her, she'd have been devastated. "Look, if I'm right, we all get what we want. You get a Seer, and I get to not bury my friend. You know what Wolf's capable of."

"Assuming she's not already dead, or too damaged," Rosalind replied churlishly. "I want contingency."

"In what way?" he could feel his heart sinking.

"I want your guarantee that she belongs to us from now onwards."

"I can't give you that outright, you know that. But if I know Claudia, then you don't have anything to worry about."

"And I want your guarantee that so do you."

The sly old bitch. One new recruit, and a Seer at that, wasn't enough for her. Greedy old cow. Everyone in The Order was the same. Corrupt and power-hungry. He shrugged. He was already caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea with a bad debt hanging over his head. Why not? He had planned on simply choosing the winning side, but with the whole cult in complete disarray, one sect was as good as another. And Valtiel was firmly off the list now, at any rate. He'd pretty much pissed on _that_ bonfire.

"You have my word and my fealty. As soon as I finish my education, I will take up service in the Saint Ladies," he replied with feigned solemnity. As if he actually _cared. _Sister Rosalind seemed to entirely miss, or ignore, the biting sarcasm behind his verbosity.

"Then let us go and find our poor, beloved sister," she sighed with a barely concealed satisfied smile and an air of false piety which infuriated him. Not five minutes ago, she couldn't have cared less if Claudia lived or died, and she still had the nerve to act as though she was committing some big act of altruism.

Well, God certainly worked in mysterious ways, but at least She seemed to be on his side for a change.


	9. Chapter 9

_AN: Long delayed update, and dedicated to Necropacem, who got me going on this again. Check out her deviantart for some seriously brilliant VincentxClaudia goodness._

_

* * *

  
_

Accompanied by Rosalind and a small gaggle of her followers, they made their way to the Wolf residence with purposeful strides. There was a sickening excitement bubbling in his stomach. He was _doing_ something, but was it too little, too late? Well, it wasn't as though there was much more he could have done without getting himself killed. But with an entire sect behind him, he felt a lot braver, like a kid who was facing up to the playground bully, with his big brother and all his friends behind him. He scratched that analogy from his mind, because that made him seem like a coward, and he wasn't. He really wasn't.

They reached the door and he rapped on it loudly, confidently. Leonard Wolf might have been a different sect, but he was still bound by the rules of The Order, and Rosalind had enough sway to usurp even his authority.

There was no answer, so he knocked again. "Open up, Wolf!" he yelled. "We all know you're in there!"

"Brother Leonard," Rosalind called out, "I demand that you answer the door this instant!"

There was a long pause, followed by footsteps on the stairs, and the door swung up. Leonard stood in the doorway, his shirt sleeves rolled up and spattered with tiny splodges of blood. "Can I help you?" he snarled in a manner which seemed thoroughly reluctant to help anyone at all.

"Yes, indeed. We have business with your daughter."

"My daughter is sadly indisposed, Sister." He shot Vincent an evil little smile, which made him want to punch him in the face. "She is unwell at present, but I will be sure to let her know that you called."

Unwell. Vincent could fucking _bet_ she was unwell. He clenched his fists.

"I sincerely hope, Brother Leonard, for your own sake, that you have not done anything rash concerning that child," Rosalind intoned. "She belongs to the Saint Ladies."

Leonard laughed derisively. "And what would the Saint Ladies, or indeed anyone, want with such a liability?"

"We have our reasons," Rosalind replied levelly. "That is not your concern. You will take us to her this instant."

"I will not!"

"You have no authority to refuse, Brother." She motioned to her followers, and two men stepped forward menacingly.

"You mean to intimidate me in my own home?" he sneered. "How very typical of your lot."

"This would not be necessary if you were to cooperate." She leaned in confidentially. "Brother Leonard, we are well aware that you beat your daughter, and that is your own business. There will be no repercussions for you should she be injured, as long as she is alive and in no permanent state of damage." It struck Vincent as though they were haggling over goods, rather than a human life.

"It would be better off for everyone if that girl was sent back to God. I should have drowned her at birth." he muttered.

"Are you saying that you mean to kill one of our own?" Rosalind demanded.

"I don't mean to kill anyone. But if God decides to take her, it is not my decision."

"You mean if she dies after you've beaten her within an inch of her life!" Vincent blurted out, in spite having promised himself to let Rosalind handle the situation.

"That is a very secular way to put matters," Wolf responded with a slight smirk. "But I suppose if you think that the importance of the business you are here on outweighs the fact that she deserves to be punished, then I must..." his upper lip twitched dangerously, "...defer to your better judgement." The expression on his face would have chilled Vincent to the bone, but Rosalind seemed entirely unaffected. Life in the Order was like one big constant crazy game of chess, and she probably knew that she had him outmanoeuvred. But Leonard seemed a little too wild looking, and something made him feel a little sick, as though this was all just a little too easy. He had expected more of a confrontation, and Wolf was notorious for rebelling violently against anything and anyone he didn't like, regardless of their authority within the Church. Maybe Rosalind was just that powerful. Maybe Leonard was a little lost without Stone to back him up. Maybe Leonard was just stalling because Claudia was already dead. After all, three days was plenty of time in which to kill someone.

As soon as Leonard stepped aside, Vincent ran up the stairs of the old house, his shoes thundering against the rotting wood as he reached Claudia's tiny little attic bedroom and burst in with a thundering crash. The room was empty, pristinely tidy and spartan as was her custom, with the bed still made. There was no sign that she had been there recently.

He ran back downstairs, ignoring the discourse which seemed to be taking place between Wolf and Sister Kaufman, ignoring the cultists waiting on the doorstep like mannequins. He began to open every door in the house, finding it to be neat and empty. Running into the kitchen, he threw back the trap door and began to descend the stairs to the basement.

"Claudia!" No answer. He had a moment's hope that perhaps she had already escaped, that her absence had been the reason for Leonard's strange demeanour.

Fumbling about for a light switch, he eventually found a cord and yanked it, light spluttering into the room from the naked bulb which swung on the ceiling.

He looked down at his feet as they scuffed against a bloodstained clump of white hair. With a rising panic in his chest he began to run through the expansive cellars underneath the house, until eventually he found a crumpled, filthy heap of blonde on black, lying like a rag doll in a dried up puddle of blood.

"Shit fuck Mother of God!" he breathed. Kneeling gingerly down beside her, he noticed a single tooth lying next to her face, which was swollen and purple beyond recognition, spattered with blood. One of her arms was sprawled at a contorted angle, and he could only imagine the injuries masked by her clothing. Feeling for a pulse and watching anxiously for the rise and fall of her chest, he found both to be present, if very faintly. She wasn't dead, just mercifully unconscious.

"Claudia, wake up," he said a little uselessly, as if she was just sleeping. "Claudia, we're going to get you out of here."

She did not respond and he was a little relieved. It would be much easier to move her if she was out cold, rather than awake and screaming in pain. He put his arms around her insensible form, trying to move her into a position where he could lift her, but she dangled uselessly in his embrace, an impossibly heavy dead weight for the skinny young man, despite her own bird like frame.

"Oh fuck it!" he exclaimed. There were about six Saint Ladies members standing upstairs catching flies. They could make themselves useful. He laid her back down gently, his shirt stained with her blood, and made his way upstairs. As he ascended, he could hear Leonard and Rosalind arguing heatedly about something.

"HERESY!" Wolf was roaring. Vincent rolled his eyes. Wasn't Leonard always roaring about something, the mad bastard? It didn't matter. They were going to get Claudia out of there, get her healthy again and then they could stop Walter, and that was that. Nothing Wolf could do now could stop them.

"Brother Leonard, I demand that you..." Rosalind's voice was cut off very suddenly, with a very sharp finality. There was a thud. Vincent opened the door to the sitting room.

And promptly wished he hadn't.

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"Oh..._God_!" he choked out as he was greeted with the sight of Leonard Wolf standing with a manic look on his face and a knife in his hand. "Where's Ros..." Vincent realised all at once, in one sickening second, that the knife that Wolf was holding was dripping viscous crimson, and that Rosalind was lying on the floor, a deep red tide flowing from her chest, mingling to obscurity in the black of her robes.

He took two steps back, stumbling and wild eyed. "Oh you did _not_ just do that!" he yelled, pointing at the body. "You did not just fucking do that, Wolf!" This was rapidly turning into the spring break from Hell. He couldn't believe that just four days ago he'd been sitting in his dorm room, a million miles away from all this, contemplating smoking a spliff, and now he was in the middle of a complete bloodbath. "Is that your answer to EVERYTHING, Leonard?!" he demanded, his voice a hysterical yell. "Do you just fucking SHANK anything you don't like? What the fuck is wrong with you people? What the FUCK is wrong with this town?!"

The other members of Saint Ladies came running in, evidently alerted by Vincent's shouting. One woman began to scream, and the two burly men of the group immediately seized hold of Leonard's arms. He dropped the knife and started to laugh. Vincent was not seeing the funny side. Clearly he'd lost the plot. Much like everyone else around here. "I sacrifice myself to the blood of criminals," he chuckled mirthlessly.

"You can sacrifice yourself to the fucking cops," he spat back, picking up the phone and dialling 911. The police were in The Order's pocket, that much was true, and local law enforcement had a habit of turning a blind eye and letting the cult run riot, but even they weren't going to treat this as a slap on the wrist situation when a sect leader had been stabbed. Not to mention the puddle of blood and teeth in the basement that was his daughter's current state.

"I need the police. And an ambulance. Um...two ambulances. A woman's been stabbed, and another woman badly beaten...It's Tarran House, just off Nathan Avenue...."


	10. Chapter 10

_AN: Another update, and more verbal diahorrea from Vincent. Hope it's all to your liking. R&R if you can be bothered. _

_~J_

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_

Sitting in the waiting room at Brookhaven's Accident and Emergency department with the members of the Saint Ladies was a very disconcerting experience. His new colleagues seemed a little hostile, and certainly omitted to include him in their hourly run to the coffee machine, the frigid bastards. He supposed it was probably because he'd inadvertently gotten their leader killed.

Eventually one of them spoke, a woman in her thirties who cast a withering look in his direction. "If he lied about Claudia Wolf having the Sight, I'll kill him myself."

"Why not kill Leonard?" Vincent retorted hotly, "He's the one who stabbed your leader."

"_Our_ leader," one of the men corrected. "You made a promise, remember?"

"Yeah, whatever." He'd have been lying if he said he felt anything resembling solidarity with this group of nutjobs at that moment in time.

"We should pray for her," someone said haughtily, and they began to do just that, intoning such dreadful and occult things that the tourist sitting in the corner looked as though she was considering driving her son to Brahms instead of having his skateboarding accident looked at in this dump full of mentalcases. Vincent pinched the bridge of his nose, and, feeling quite self conscious, decided there was nothing for it but to join in. It wasn't as though he could do anything else anyway, except sit and wait for news from the doctor about the two women. So, as he joined in the prayers for Rosalind, he made his own silent, private entreaty to God for the safety of Claudia, whose welfare had been all but forgotten by the Saint Ladies in the midst of the crisis surrounding their leader.

He was starting to grow sleepy from all the monotonous chanting when the door opened and a sympathetic looking young nurse entered, commanding instant silence as the whole room looked at her expectantly. Vincent recognised her as one of the rank and file faithful who frequented the lakeside church. He also realised, a split second before everyone else, that the look on her face betrayed anything but good news.

"I...I'm sorry..." she stammered, "Sister Kauffman is...is...well...she's with God now."

There was an instant uproar as the women began to sob and the men began to mutter angry words of vengeance. Vincent took advantage of the commotion to grab the nurse by her arm and pull her out of the room.

"Claudia Wolf." He stared at the nurse intently, still gripping her arm tightly, his voice little more than a growl. "How is she?"

She shook him off indignantly. "Miss Wolf was very badly injured. She sustained multiple fractures to..."

"Is she going to be alright?" he interrupted, in no mood for a medical lecture.

"She's stable, and should make a full recovery."

A wave of relief broke like a tidal wave, a desperate, euphoric sensation which overwhelmed him. He couldn't help it, really. He threw his arms around the bewildered nurse, who was taken aback, and evidently was of the impression that no one particularly cared if Leonard Wolf's daughter was alive or dead. He released her quickly and cleared his throat, his cheeks burning a little at his own sentimentality.

"Can I see her?"

She shrugged with a sort of "Sure, why the Hell not?" gesture, and he followed her down the whitewashed, cracked and peeling corridors of what was possibly the world's least hygienic looking hospital, until they reached a sideroom. "She's heavily sedated," she told him, before leaving him alone.

"Mother of God..." he whispered as he sat down in the rickety little plastic chair beside the bed. Lying there, in that grubby little bed, her right arm and leg in plaster, the pale and paper thin skin of her bony arms mottled with bruises and bandages and clotting wounds, her face grotesque and swollen, her lank hair stained with dirt and filth and dry brown blood, he thought that he had never seem a more repulsive portrait of her father's cruelty. Perhaps it was just because he was more emotionally involved, because _this _ was actually partially his fault, but he thought that the sight of her then was almost worse than when he'd hid in the bushes and glimpsed Alessa's charred and blackened form in the arms of that redneck truck driver, the night of the fire at the Gillespie home.

"Vincent...?" she murmured.

He started, not having expected her to register his presence, in her current state. "Um...yeah. It's me." He choked out a weird little laugh, which was entirely mirthless. He never did seem to be able to react appropriately to something serious, his emotions betraying themselves in the most inopportune ways. How many times had he opened fire with a cutting remark, instead of just saying "Hey, I'm worried about you"? And he'd do it again, he had no doubt. He'd probably keep it up until the day he died. Vincent sighed to himself and put one thin, clammy hand on her swollen, broken one.

"So...your Dad stabbed Rosalind Kauffman to death." It seemed like as good a conversation opener as any.

"Oh..." she slurred. "S'a shame." Clearly she wasn't really in any fit state to take in what he was saying, but he pressed on, because, well, he wasn't really sure what else to say.

"Oh, and I sort of signed us both up for the Saint Ladies. Yay for us. It was the only way I could get the old bitch, God rest her soul, to help us out. Walter's still at large, but at least your Dad's in prison. Oh and I took the kids to Lakeside Amusement Park. And hey, here's an idea, when you're well, do you fancy, maybe...getting the Hell out of Silent Hill forever before one of us winds up dead?" He cleared his throat. "I mean, we could just skim some funds from the Church, God knows, they've got plenty, and get a cheap car, and just drive. I could shoot for an accountancy position somewhere, I've got enough college credits, or maybe take on secretarial work and well, I guess you could get a waitressing job or something. Ok, well, maybe you couldn't, because you've got no people skills...but hey, what about fortune telling? You could do that no problem. Or work in a library, those places are always full of freaks and weirdos. I mean, well, what I'm trying to say is, we've got options. Not great ones, sure, but we don't have to stick around waiting for the shit to hit the fan."

He cringed to himself. It sounded like he was asking her to elope with him. Maybe part of him was. But that was probably the sympathy talking. He always did have a thing for the damsels in distress. Regardless, he was babbling like an idiot.

It was, then, a blessed relief when he looked at Claudia and realised that, in her semi conscious state, she'd taken absolutely none of it in. Well thank God for small mercies, he thought. And for bigger ones, too. Claudia might be gravely injured, but she'd recover in time, and with a bit of luck, Leonard Wolf would never see the light of day after what he did to Rosalind. The world hadn't exactly suffered a great loss with _her_ death, either. Although he suspected that, after this fiasco, he and Claudia, despite being members now, were probably not going to receive any invites to the next Saint Ladies summer barbecue. Not that Vincent had ever particularly cared for stray dog, anyway, as far as delicacies went.

He leaned back in his chair and sighed loudly.

"Where the Hell am I supposed to go from here...?" he murmured aloud, suddenly desperate for her to sit up and start talking some harsh sense into him. But his only reponse was the slow "drip, drip, drip" of Claudia's IV line.


End file.
